Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook (Garland Medieval Casebooks)

Violence in Courtly Medieval Culture explores the dark side of courtly literature. Although courtly literature is often associated with a chivalrous and idyllic life, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the quest for love in the world of medieval courtly literature was underpinned by violence - lovers were rejected, mistrust ruled, rape was a rampant problem, and marriage was often characterized by brutality. The collection focuses on the prevalence of what is now known as 'domestic violence' in the world of courtly literature. Many female writers addressed the problematic correlation of love with violence, specifically the physical violence that women faced at the hands of men, as witnessed by the twelfth-century troubairitz poetry, thirteenth and fourteenth century women's trouvere poetry, and by fifteenth and sixteenth century German women's love poetry. Not surprisingly, as medieval law books, romances and short narratives demonstrate, domestic violence was not at all unknown in the Middle Ages and represented a severe problem, which women could fight with only very limited resources because biblical teachings assigned absolute power to the father/husband BookCover......Page 1 Half-Title......Page 2 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 1 Authority, Violence, and the Sacred at the Medieval Court......Page 46 2 Brutality and Violence in Medieval French Romance and Its Consequences1......Page 74 3 Turnus in Veldeke’s Eneide: The Effects of Violence......Page 89 4 Violence and Pain at the Court: Comparing Violence in German Heroic and Courtly Epics......Page 102 5 Violence Stylized1......Page 119 6 Violence at King Arthur’s Court: Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Perspectives1......Page 130 7 Violence in La Queste del Saint Graal and La Mort le roi Artu (Yale 229)......Page 152 8 Violence and Communication in Shota Rustaveli’s The Lord of the Panther-Skin......Page 168 9 Constructive and Destructive Violence in Jean d’Arras’ Roman de Mélusine......Page 184 10 The Violent Poetics of Inversion, or the Inversion of Violent Poetics: Meo dei Tolomei, His Mother, and the Italian Tradition of Comic poetry......Page 202 11 Violent Magic in Middle English Romance......Page 218 12 Why Is Middle English Romance So Violent? The Literary and Aesthetic Purposes of Violence......Page 232 13 Destruire et disperser. Violence and the Fragmented Body in Christine de Pizan’s Prose Letters......Page 258 14 Mimetic Crisis in the Medieval Mass: A Sequence for the Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury and Its Liturgical Function, ca. 1230......Page 283 15 Violence in the Spanish Chivalric Romance......Page 309 Contributors......Page 327 Index......Page 330

Although courtly literature is often associated with a chivalrous and idyllic life, the fifteen original essays in this collection demonstrate that the quest for love in the world of medieval courtly literature was underpinned by violence. Lovers were rejected, mistrust ruled, rape was a rampant problem, and marriage was often characterized by brutality. Albrecht Classen brings together an outstanding group of historical, cultural, and literary scholars in this volume to investigate the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising unions of love and violence in courtly medieval literature.

Love, hatred, aggression, and ultimately violence are such ever-present and yet amorphous forces in human society that it might seem almost superfluous to subject them to close scholarly examinations.